


A Little Voice

by ihaveacleverfandomurl



Series: All The Voices [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, keith is a tiny child that gets the parenting he deserves from two teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 03:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12808395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihaveacleverfandomurl/pseuds/ihaveacleverfandomurl
Summary: Shiro’s hesitant to touch the kid, to scare him, but he’s even more hesitant to leave him here to shiver in his sleep, cuddled up with nothing next to long-dead blackened logs.So gently, he places a hand on the kid’s head. Not expecting a near-instantaneous squeak and jump and roll away, across the ground. The kid lands in a defensive posture, and his eyes are darting between the two men, now some feet away from his landing spot.Shiro and Matt find a kid on their camping trip to get away from the pressures of being seniors in high school. Keith may be twitchy and scared, but Shiro is ready to help him in any way he can. But Keith might not stick around forever.





	A Little Voice

**Author's Note:**

> Not really any TWs this time! Aftermath of abuse unfortunately but that's only clear if you know what happened.  
> Prequel to [All The Voices Seem To Fade When You Are Here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10979442). It can be read alone but I'm placing it in the reading list as best read at around the beginning of chapter 14! Also, you should definitely read [All The Voices Seem To Drown Me Out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12301911), as this happens soon after that fic and will provide a lot more context!  
> Also not required reading in the main storyline (but who doesn't love a good "how shiro and keith actually met" story........completely in an alternate universe but....)  
> -  
> ok so this was written before...,,,,season 4 so matt is.....not himself. jesus christ....that season man...  
> and happy thanksgiving to american readers! family is something you can make, not necessarily are born with, as Keith finds in this fic! hope you can spend today with people you love, regardless of blood relation <3

They were camping when it happened.

Senior year of high school had not been kind to Shiro, and Matt had piled right in to the sinking boat behind him. College apps were a giant mess, classes were driving them up the wall, and Shiro was sure he was half a second away from snapping and punching somebody.

So they’d just packed up one Thursday afternoon and left a little early for the weekend. Without telling anybody.

Oh, the Holts hadn’t been happy, of course. They’d called and texted Matt about five hundred different times. Shiro thought they might have communicated via carrier pigeon if they’d thought it would mean a quicker return.

The Shiroganes, on the other hand, were out of town. As usual. On business. No calls came through on their end.

Shiro was used to it. They were never home.

But thankfully, Matt’s overprotective parents that usually made up for Shiro’s lack of them hadn’t followed the two out into the actual woods, so the serenity of their campsite remained undisturbed. Matt had brought along his good old boombox, Shiro had pitched the tent, and their haul included not only some beer bummed off one of Matt’s friends, but also bacon, marshmallows, and hot cocoa mix. They were _set_.

The spot they’d snagged was a hop and skip away from the calm waters of a clear lake, which of course had meant that the two of them had been forced to attempt to push each other in as soon as possible upon arrival.

The first day was good. Hell, it was great, Shiro mused. Nagging homework was almost forgotten and pressuring nerves from the outside world were set aside as they threw gram cracker bits at each other across the fire with chocolate covered fingers in the light of only flickering flames. They didn’t even notice the tiny face peering from between the trees as they yawned and rubbed itching eyes and kicked out the fire for the night.

* * *

Shiro wakes to Matt’s hand urgently shaking his shoulder, but it takes a few moments for him to gather this as he blinks in the just-barely-there light.

“Shiro. Shiro, there’s a kid!”

“What?” he mumbles intelligently before Matt growls a sigh and yanks at his arm, tugging him from the nice warm sleeping bag he’d cocooned himself in. “Shh, just...come on.”

It’s with sleepy bemusement that Shiro complies, rubbing at his eyes as Matt tugs him from the tent and points.

Shiro has to blink a few more times to believe it. Curled up next to the fire – or what used to be the fire – a tiny, dark haired boy, shivering in clothing that looks worn and dirty, sound asleep.

“Is he...”

“He has to be lost.” Matt folds his arms, his tone hushed. “He was out here when I got up to use the toilet, but who would just let their kid wander off like this? Those clothes look disgusting and he’s gotta be halfway frozen!”

“We should...” Fix this. Call somebody. But first –

Shiro turns and tugs his sleeping bag out of the tent. Still slightly warm. Good.

He’s hesitant to touch the kid, to scare him, but he’s even more hesitant to leave him here to shiver in his sleep, cuddled up with nothing next to long-dead blackened logs.

So gently, he places a hand on the kid’s head. Not expecting a near-instantaneous squeak and jump and roll away, across the ground. The kid lands in a defensive posture, and his eyes are darting between the two men, now some feet away from his landing spot.

“Hey,” Shiro says, in a voice that sounds an awful lot like one to soothe a frightened animal. “Hey, it’s all right. I’m Shiro. This is Matt. We want to help you. What’s your name?”

The kid has relaxed, brushing long black bangs out of his eyes. But he doesn’t come any closer, doesn’t speak. He’s still shivering, and the sympathy shakes are starting to get to Shiro, too.

“Here, you look cold. I have this sleeping bag, we can start back up the fire. Where are your parents?”

An immediate tensing, a heavy glare. More trembling. He tucks his hands into his armpits and shakes his head vehemently. Immediately, Shiro backpedals.

“No? No. What do you need?”

“Well, _I’m_ cold. I’m gonna get a fire going.” Matt seems to be testing the waters as he cautiously reaches for the fire starting tools, gauging the kid’s reaction. Eyes follow him. Nothing else. The line between his brows doesn’t soften, but he seems accepting of this.

The fire doesn’t want to catch immediately in the early morning dew, but after it’s fed a few newspapers and an only slightly damp log or two, it’s going nicely.

Shiro watches the boy carefully, knowing Matt is doing the same. He seems enthralled by the flames, something unreadable passing across his face as he shakes once, twice, slowly, slowly stepping towards the warmth, and then the movement subsides altogether.

They let silence reign for a while, the two of them, watching the kid.

 _He looks thin,_ Shiro thinks. Too thin.

Gaunt, pale. A shadow of something that looks awfully close to a bruise stretching across his cheek. His nose just ever-so-slightly crooked, in such a way that scares Shiro, because it looks like the work of someone nasty.

He’s so small. Can’t be more than twelve, thirteen. Honestly, he looks younger than that. Shiro’s heart aches.

“What do you need?”

Maybe it’s the kid in him that always wanted a parental figure to be there for him that brings him cautiously closer, reaching out with all the carefulness in the world to gently clasp the boy’s shoulder.

Matt inhales behind him, clearly ready for the kid to bolt, but instead the boy shudders once more and relaxes, eyes flicking to Shiro. “Food,” he says.

“Okay. Okay, all right.” He looks to Matt, eyes wide. “Uh, what do we have?”

Matt’s at the cooler in no time flat, chewing on his lip. “I mean...bacon? That’s about it? Shit. We might wanna go on a grocery run.”

The doubtful look he casts at the kid is clear. Their snacks aren’t gonna be enough for a child the weight of their two backpacks combined, if that.

“Could you go? I can split the cost with you later. I’ll stay with him.”

Matt tugs at his arm to pull him somewhat aside, but Shiro can still feel the kid’s eyes on them. “Should we call the cops?”

He’d muttered it, but the movement out of the corner of Shiro’s eye is lightning fast and the voice shrill. “No! _No cops!_ ”

The kid’s eyes are wild, his knuckles white. Shiro raises his hands to calm. “Hey, hey, it’s all right. Are you in trouble?”

“No parents, no cops,” he spits, a wildfire contained within the tiniest of bodies.

“None,” Shiro says in a soothing tone. “Matt’s going to go get some more food for you, and I’m going to cook our bacon in the meantime. No parents, no cops.”

The kid blinks, his shoulders still hiked around his ears, wary. He’s trembling again.

* * *

It takes half an hour for the kid to seemingly calm down again, and for him to let Shiro wrap him in a sleeping bag and start frying up the bacon.

Matt had snatched the keys, his wallet, and a sweatshirt, casting anxious glances back at the other two before booking it out of there.

The kid, for his part, is now almost dozing, sitting huddled in the sleeping bag, eyes half open. They flicker whenever Shiro shifts.

When he slides the crispy bacon onto a camping plate and comes to sit beside the kid, they finally open entirely, staring at the food with conflicted but obvious interest.

Shiro sets it in front of him and brings his knees to his chest, folding his arms over them. He sighs as the kid licks his lips.

“A name, just a first one, even?”

The boy looks up at him. “No parents?” he asks in a small voice.

Shiro shakes his head. “No parents.”

“And no cops.”

“None.” He tries to smile. It’s hard.

The kid’s eyes drop back to the bacon, and he seizes on it, forgoing the fork Shiro had placed beside the plate for his bare hands. “Keith,” he mumbles, looking back up after he’s eaten three pieces. “M’ name’s Keith.”

* * *

Keith eats all the bacon they have and curls up next to the fire, finally fully asleep again.

When Matt comes back with a haul of actual meals they can cook, Shiro sets to making them, too, and when he next glances over at the sleeping bag, it’s to see a pair of wide open eyes peeking out. He grins and shakes the pan of beans in Keith’s direction. “More food!”

Keith is spooning beans into his mouth when Matt crouches next to him with a steaming cup, and Shiro smiles at Keith cautiously staring at Matt over the rim of the mug of hot chocolate as he sips and doesn’t jump away.

“What do we do, Shiro?” Matt asks him as dark starts creeping in again that night, and Keith is asleep in the tent now, still in Shiro’s sleeping bag. They peer through the flap together at the small lump.

“I can take him.”

Matt turns to stare. “What?”

“My parents are never home. I make enough off my part time job and the money they leave me. I’ll look after him.”

It’s a surprisingly well-working plan, for a while. They go home early, Keith vibrating in the car as he stares out the windows like a scared pet heading to the vet, nervously gaping up at Shiro’s house as they pull in, taking a solid week to settle into the guest bedroom. Shiro hesitates to leave him while they head to school, but when he sits him down in front of their giant TV with the Holts’ on-loan extensive Disney movie collection and lots of microwave meals, Keith seems content to wait until Shiro gets back every day.

Matt stops by every chance he gets, bringing more movies and some of his favorite video games, as well as a couple books that his genius little sister, smaller than even Keith, has read cover to cover.

And it’s very good, especially on the weekends, when the three can spend time together, and Keith doesn’t act like a skittish wild animal around them anymore, and they think that maybe he could find a place in the world as he pores over textbooks and gets a little more comfortable every day.

But Keith retreats fearfully when they suggest meeting others, hides away, and the pressures of school, and his job, the future, _and_ worrying about Keith finally get to Shiro one night and he has to call Matt on the verge of tears because he’d gotten accepted into six different colleges that day, but they were all far, far away from here and what were they going to do? Where was he going to go? Where was _Keith_ going to go?

Matt doesn’t know, but he got accepted to some of those same colleges, and they nervously compare, and anxiously debate, and say on three that they want to go to a college that ends up being the same. And maybe, maybe, Shiro says, and Matt agrees, that they can figure out Keith together. They can work out how to help him.

Only when Shiro props the phone between his shoulder and his ear and rounds the corner of the doorway to the guest bedroom to include the subject of their conversation in their exchange, the bed is messy but utterly empty.

They search. For weeks.

But Keith had gone, with only the clothes on his back and the biggest knife from the kitchen block.

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: when you forget that you meant to add a plot point so have to add in a quick extra bit *sweats*  
> -  
> if you haven’t, check out [the main story of this series](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10979442), which will add more context, and also my other All The Voices oneshots, especially [All The Voices Seem To Drown Me Out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12301911)!  
> Keith will make a lot more sense if you do lol  
> -  
> thoughts after just watching s4, preserved, because i never expressed them in any of my other fics:  
> i can’t believe memelord matt is fucking canon....i can’t believe that fucking season they tossed into our laps....jESUS  
> (i loved last season but this one was kind of.....shit tbh.....,,i am salty i’m sorry,,,,if you too are salty feel free to come rant to me on my tumblr or something and we’ll get deep into those salt mines together)  
> [my creative tumblr](http://kayizcray.tumblr.com) | [my personal tumblr](http://ihaveacleverfandomurl.tumblr.com/) | ([& my cosplay instagram](https://www.instagram.com/kayizcray/))  
> 


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